Trump to Bring Back the Gas Line?

At RealClear Markets, Peter Grossman of the National Center for Energy Analytics considers President Trump's recent tirades against "unrealistic" gasoline prices and what an authoritarian ignoramus like him might do about them.

Along the way, a name increasingly familiar lately for other bad reasons comes up: Richard Nixon, whose brilliant solution to inflation, price controls, sounds like it would be right up Trump's alley.

I am old enough to remember gas lines and rationing fuel by allowing sales on certain days to even or odd tag numbers, but I didn't get the full picture of the carnage that wreaked: I was, after all, not even 10 back then.

Grossman fills us all in on what we can expect if Trump pulls such a stunt:

Refiners and retailers had to petition for price increases, and couldn't automatically pass on rising costs. Decisions were handed down at the start of the following month. As a result, many gas stations simply closed during the final week of each month while waiting for approval to raise prices. Allotments were also made monthly, and some stations had to close toward the end of the month having run through their supplies before they could replenish their stock. This only lengthened gas lines.

Because stations could not just pass along costs, government controls squeezed station profit margins. Consequently, hundreds of stations closed for good in 1973-4. [bold added]

Any economist who knows what he is talking about in the least will warn against price controls, but in the Trump era, will they be heard at all?

They're not part of Trump's inner circle, and he made it clear long ago that they aren't wanted in his party.

In a time when the brain-dead and those who pander to them mock "experts" and "elites" -- while praising blind faith in a single, not-too-bright individual -- it will be the voices who could easily spare us a lot of pain who are least likely to be heard.

Trump supporters would do well to consider how similar the idea that Trump will do it right sounds to the socialists who are even now saying This time, it will work!

And vice versa.

I won't be holding my breath.

-- CAV

SAVE Act a Logistical Nightmare

I oppose Trump's SAVE Act for reasons I have already elaborated upon. It is nevertheless interesting to see that even some of its supporters see its passage now as a disaster, as it is currently written.

At The Washington Examiner is an editorial supporting the legislation that points out that it is now too late to implement it in time for the midterms:

The legislation's timing provisions would make that task especially difficult. The act would take effect upon enactment rather than after a transition period. The Election Assistance Commission would have only 10 days to issue implementation guidance, and the legislation does not provide states with implementation funding. These administrative changes will take months to complete properly.

Election Day is Nov. 3, but the operational election calendar begins much earlier. Under federal law, states generally must transmit absentee ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before a federal election. That deadline falls on Sept. 19.

Before then, officials must finalize ballot procedures, update databases, print instructions, test equipment, and train personnel. Early voting begins in some jurisdictions not long afterward. Registration activity is already underway, and voters are already relying on rules published by their states.

Changing those rules in August or September could create different requirements for people registering only weeks apart. It could also produce inconsistent implementation among states or even among counties within the same state, as officials interpret hurried federal guidance while defending their decisions in court. [bold added]

It is even more interesting that, surely knowing this, the President is pressuring the Senate to rush this bill through to passage.

Gosh, it's almost as if Trump wants to undermine confidence in the next election and so look justified in meddling with the results.

It's impractical! has never been a great way to fight against terrible policy, but when a policy is so bad that even some of its proponents say that, perhaps there is more reason to hope the bullet in the chamber misses.

-- CAV

'Reforming' the Jones Act?

With the current waiver of the Jones Act set to expire on August 16 and copious data indicating its repeal would be a boon to the U.S. economy, one might wonder why there isn't significant momentum behind repealing it once and for all.

The general answer -- that precious few of today's politicians are pro-free-market and that we're too deeply mired in a mixed economy for that to even be in the Overton Window -- will be obvious to most regulars here. If the minutiae of the pull peddling interests you, a recent post on the matter at The Abundance and Growth Blog will be of further interest.

That said, I'd also assign a great deal of the blame to our President, with his muddled and unprincipled views on economics. How could a protectionist like him muster the arguments or enthusiasm to use his bull pulpit to advantage despite him own dislike of the law?

So the post explains what it states plainly: "There aren't the votes for an outright repeal of the Jones Act, and there are not likely to be the votes any time soon."

That's the bad news.

The good news, such as it is, is that there might be bipartisan support for more limited reforms that could blunt some of its worst effects.

These measures are:

• An exemption for Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Northeast states reliant on heating oil, or perhaps just one of that set
• Repealing the build requirement of the act but not the crewing requirements, so that labor unions representing US seafarers continue to benefit, and perhaps even gain as the new foreign-built ships hire their members
• Pairing adjustments to the act with buyout offers to current US-based shipbuilders, so those affected have resources to choose a new career path and the transition is truly win-win
• Pairing changes to the act with subsidies to US-based shipbuilders akin to those in the SHIPS for America Act, so US firms face more competition but also have more resources with which to face it

Given how deadly the Jones Act has been for American shipbuilding (and how little government subsidies help the subsidized), I hate the last of these, but the others would be a real improvement, as much as they all leave to be desired.

-- CAV

Four Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Open Bigotry as Opportunity

Letters from readers of Miss Manners and Prudence each show the potential value of meeting bigotry with a dignified response.

One of these letters, to Miss Manners from an American who frequently travels abroad, deals with a common complaint: people who make snide comments about "Americans" at our expense.

Miss Manners replies in part:

As such comments are almost certainly based on the age-old cliche that all Americans are rude or bullies, they ignore the hypocrisy that only rude bullies would offer such an insult to a guest in their country.

The proper response is therefore to silently, but politely, make clear that you know you have been insulted. If you can excuse yourself, do so. If not, look stern and ignore the speaker for a time. This forces others to question their assumptions both about Americans and about themselves -- which will be far better for you than getting into a fight in a foreign country. [bold added]

In the second letter, a reader contributes his perspective to advice she gave to a gay couple about possibly attending a family reunion together. He says in part:

[A]ll the times we calmly showed up and were just nice and pleasant had an effect on my whole religious family. They couldn't keep up the bigotry in the face of two decent and kind guys just living their lives authentically. My relationship with my parents became really close, and my nieces and nephews started telling their parents that they didn't want to listen to them bad-talking their uncle when they preached "love one another" in church, but then talk hatefully about their own brother.

...

I would tell the writer not to do anything they don't think they can handle or that would make them feel unsafe, but sometimes it is the simple act of showing up and being yourselves that brings people around and forces them to confront their bigotry. Plus, you never know which niece or nephew might desperately need to see you living your authentic lives to give them hope and courage to weather their own situation... [bold added]

This is a prime example of the approach Miss Manners advises paying off in getting people to overcome dehumanizing prejudices. (The corollary of politely letting an ass know you've been insulted is to enjoy the company of those who aren't going along with it.)

As the emphasis on safety in the second letter indicates, everyone must make a risk calculation about such situations, especially when they're avoidable, but standing up for oneself in the face of bigotry is a way to improve the world one lives in small, but appreciable ways.

-- CAV

Reparations: Still Unjust

Judging by the headlines in the New York Post, reparations for slavery are back in the news. This time, Alameda County, California, which notably contains Oakland, is considering cash payments to black residents.

The conservative outlet, predictably, is against the idea and, just as predictably, focuses on the impracticality of the idea and its historical absurdity, while sloppily conceding the moral high ground to its advocates.

California’s Kamala Harris, the first black female presidential nominee, also reportedly has a slave owner among her ancestors.

Is she supposed to pay reparations to herself?

This is humorous for the second or two before one realizes that the very premise that makes it humorous goes completely unchallenged, which is quite a price for a giggle.

By contrast, an older opinion piece by Brian Phillips goes for the jugular, starting with his title of "California Reparations Task Force: Fighting Injustice with Injustice." (The piece also addresses what I suspect is a big factual miss by the Post: The reparations might not even be about slavery, but about racist policies.)

Phillips's central argument is clear, straightforward, and refreshing in an era when the conservative movement has gone so far astray that it has been sighted in the weeds of economic illiteracy and corruption:

Justice demands that the guilty be punished and they make restitution to the victim. To give restitution to those who were not victims is to grant unearned rewards. To punish those who did not participate in an injustice is to penalize the innocent. Neither is an act of justice. Neither restitution nor punishment should be dispensed simply because of skin color. Yet, this was what the task force wants to do.

So, regarding that joke: What is Kamala Harris -- or anyone else -- supposed to do regarding "reparations" that distribute money looted from individuals to others, based on accidental membership in a group, such as a race?

Oppose that idea as the evil, unjust proposal that it is.

-- CAV

Mark Kelly in '28?

In The Atlantic is a lengthy profile -- over 6500 words -- of Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who is contemplating a presidential run.

Based on his standing up to President Trump and Pete Hegseth last year regarding the impropriety of military officers following illegal orders and his subsequent legal persecution by the same, I have come to admire Kelly as among the few good men in politics in a position to offer meaningful pushback against Trump's authoritarian, lunatic administration.

I welcome this news.

While I hardly expect to agree with many of Kelly's political positions, given that he is a Democrat, the need to repudiate today's Republicans without ushering in a woke or socialist administration that would assume it had a mandate makes any sane Democrat worth a look.

Given the strong slant of the profile (and the lefty political slant of the publication), I took a look at Kelly's Wikipedia entry for that purpose, and find that while his political positions are far from ideal, they fall into the category of sane/tempered by facts/I could live with someone like that in office. As for the profile itself, I found it to be a mixed bag.

I was not thrilled to learn, for example, that a willingness to bend politics in the name of altruism is a major part of what got Kelly into politics in the first place:

... I asked Kelly what had made him decide to run for office. First off, he said, he was concerned about "the trajectory of our country with Donald Trump in the White House." This did not exactly make him a brave and lonely voice in the Democratic wilderness. But Kelly traces his particular aha moment to a get-out-the-vote rally that he attended in Phoenix before the 2018 midterms. A woman, probably in her 30s, approached him.

"She just stands next to me and says, 'Hey, my son has Down Syndrome. And I'm terrified he's going to lose his health insurance. Would you please consider running for the U.S. Senate?'" Kelly told the woman he would think about it.

This is not great, but it isn't Eat the Rich, either, and it's pretty culturally in the mainstream, which is (with only the rarest exceptions) what one has to expect of a politician today.

Much more compelling is Kelly's willingness to take a stand to protect our form of government:

Kelly keeps his official letter of censure from Hegseth taped to the door of his Senate office. I hadn't noticed it until he mentioned it to me. The document -- dated January 5, 2026 -- is addressed to "Captain Kelly" and printed on "Department of War" stationery. It is three pages long, one of them crooked. Kelly told me that he hung the missive sloppily on purpose, to reflect his lack of respect for its contents and sender. Perhaps, he said, he should smear it with ketchup.

I asked Kelly why he displays the letter on his door.

"I think that, you know, the seriousness of this whole thing," he said.

"It's good for me to be reminded of what's at stake, and who these people are." [bold added]

And, later:

Kelly made this clear to me too. If "they actually sent me to prison, I'll be fine," he told me. "I'll continue to fight back against these people."

I mentioned that it would seem unlikely at this point that Kelly would be sent to jail over the "illegal orders" video. The government, after all, already failed once to win an indictment against the lawmakers. Kelly agreed, but then went on to describe scenarios in which it could happen: If, Kelly suggested, his lawsuit against Hegseth goes to the Supreme Court and they rule against him, the Pentagon could then have other punishment options. "I could wind up in a nonjudicial punishment process in the Navy," he said. "And you know, that's a big pain in the ass."

"I tell you what they could do; they could try to indict us again," Kelly continued. "Then, maybe do it in a place where maybe they get enough grand jurors. And then I wind up getting charged with seditious conspiracy."

I joked that if Kelly did wind up in prison, he would probably raise $50 million within a week. He reiterated that he was not scared of imprisonment. His wife is not worried about it either, he said. [bold added]

Kelly is surely making a politician's calculation here to the effect that he would be able to raise enough of a public outrage to blunt the effects of such an effort. But this is hardly an easy way out and I see few other politicians willing to confront this Administration so openly.

I could probably support Mark Kelly for President. I am glad he's considering a run.

-- CAV